Pedro Sánchez was seen by 3,888,000 people last Tuesday at some point during the interview in El Hormiguero. This week, the President of the Government plans to attend El Programa de Ana Rosa, the leading audience space on television mornings. He has also committed his presence in the viral podcast ‘La Pija y la Quinqui’ ‘, as well as in the humor program of Cadena SER’ Hora Veintipico ‘. In contrast, the classic campaign rallies can be counted on the fingers of one hand between now and July 23.
The PSOE traces its own pessimism
Further
In view of the results, the PSOE’s electoral strategy for the generals will be radically opposed to the one deployed on May 28. During the two weeks of the campaign of the regional and municipal governments, both the President of the Government and practically all of the Socialist ministers fought in endless party acts throughout the entire territory with permanent announcements of measures adopted by the Executive . And the feeling, after the opinion of the polls, is that it was of little use.
The specificities of the 23J appointment, without a solution of continuity with respect to the 28M one, focused on the need for a comeback for the left and in the middle of summer, have led the designers of Ferraz’s electoral strategy to conclude that they cannot do the usual because the circumstances are radically different. For this reason, and because the usual does not seem to work. “In the municipal ones we held spectacular rallies with two thousand, three thousand and almost four thousand people. Feijóo did ridiculous acts and in many he did not even fill. And what good was it?”, they ask themselves in the leadership of the PSOE.
In the president’s team they think that the party’s territorial apparatuses, most of them very worn out after another exhausting campaign and in many cases with low spirits, and even with internal tensions after the setback at the polls, are not ready for a new overexertion And furthermore, they believe, it would hardly add any value to the objective of rising in the polls. “Putting 3,000 people into a venue on a Tuesday afternoon in July is a tremendous effort for any federation. And then that act goes unnoticed by the general public because they hardly make a cut on the news,” they argue.
The idea, therefore, is to drastically reduce the number of rallies. Although the campaign of the Socialists is still in the middle of the design process and is coupled, moreover, to the political needs of the moment, and even to the weekly variations of the polls, the expected thing is that the party acts of a lifetime are practically circumscribed to the weekends and that they are not many. There will be in some emblematic squares for the PSOE that were lost a month ago, such as Valladolid or Valencia. But the agenda of the candidate and president will not be covered in its entirety by the rallies.
In fact, Pedro Sánchez will have to combine his electoral campaign with his obligations at the head of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, released this weekend. And the idea is that he then turns to preparing both the most important interviews and the debates.
These interviews, such as the one in El Hormiguero last week or the one in El Programa de Ana Rosa this week, are of paramount importance in Ferraz due to the ability to reach so many people in such a short time a speech and a candidate who they continue to believe winners against the offer on the right. “For the PSOE it is good that many people see and listen to Pedro Sánchez, just the opposite of what happens to the PP with Feijóo,” the Socialists maintain.
That is the reason, in the opinion of the PSOE, why they have been engaged in the negotiations of the electoral debates for weeks on Calle Génova. The intention of the popular was for as few things to happen as possible in the time interval between May 28 and July 23 so that the atmosphere of victory would remain intact on the right. But the truth is that they are happening, and almost all of them have to do with the internal noise in the right itself on account of the coalition pacts between the PP and Vox.
After days of negotiations and refusals, the popular finally ended up accepting a face to face between Sánchez and Feijóo that will be held at Atresmedia on July 10. And that is one of the dates marked in red by the socialist leadership. The precedents in the Senate of the dialectical clashes between the two political leaders cement Ferraz’s conviction that the Prime Minister is clearly a favorite in this type of format. And the idea is to prepare it and face it as a real opportunity to deal a blow to the PP and turn around some polls that, timidly, are already beginning to draw a change in trend.
The Socialists claim that this is not the only debate and that Feijóo has to face more appointments of this type, which the Galician politician and his team clearly deny. With this objective, both the PSOE and Sumar and Vox have confirmed the presence of their candidates for four-way debates on RTVE and in the Grupo Prisa to which, to this day, the popular ones refuse to go.
For now, and striving not to make mistakes that would once again facilitate the change of script of the pre-campaign in favor of the right, the Socialists are licking their lips at the obvious nerves in recent weeks on Calle Génova regarding the political dependence of Vox that It reached its peak on Friday with the appearance of the Extremaduran leader, María Guardiola. And they believe, regarding the four-person debate, that Feijóo is facing a difficult crossroads: choose the least bad plan between debating with the Vox leader and candidate to be his vice president, or leaving the lectern empty.
